Opportunity

The night the ghoul came, I was despondent. It happens. It happens whenever I sit for too long and think about the waste I've made of my life, about the libraries' worth of words I've absorbed in more languages than I'll bother listing, the fiction of ages, the accounts of facts, the folklore, the deep studies into all the sciences. The focus of my self-criticism is on my parasitic nature, on the way I've assimilated so great a mass of words but have nothing of my own to contribute. I have tried for serious fiction, but as you, the reader, can tell from these few opening sentences, my structures and vocabulary are archaic and pretentious. I have at the last turned to comedies of opposites, a form long detested by scholars, myself among them. The cheap tactic of taking the opposites to extremes has even begun to crop up in the outer space alien television sitcom I was penning when the monster arrived. It concerned, as with Alf or Mork and Mindy, a straitlaced human saddled with a preposterous alien. The human was named Steve and the alien, Haxlflubitz. I had just perfected the alien's line, "Stove, I cannot make-work the Steve." The juxtaposition of the human's name and the name of the appliance, the awkward grasp of the English language that made little sense in a creature possessed of a great intellect and technology, these were to be central themes. Steve was to explain that Haxlflubitz was not allowed to use the stove. A tear was rolling down my cheek when the scraping came at the door.

I ignored it. The maid often sought entry to my study to compel me to pay advance wages, particularly on those weekends when she and her boyfriend would no doubt take the filthy train to Brighton Beach and copulate in front of God and everyone after the gates had long since closed.

I turned my attentions to my book of supernatural jests, which was nearing its two hundredth page. The joke that was to cross this momentous threshold of stupidity concerned a young man, closed in his room and annoying the Ancient Ones by speaking their names aloud only to present the proper warding signs when they were summoned. His mother, well-aware of this habit and filled with great consternation, was to be described as pounding upon his door and shouting, "William, you had better not be Hastur-baiting in there!" I had a sad chuckle, not at the joke, but at how far I had fallen, for a fall from an aspiration is always greater than from an achievement - achievers can achieve again, but a dreamer can only remain in the wretched abortive state of wishing, which I regard as a sort of cul-de-sac accidentally happened upon that keeps one in a perpetual state of agitation that can lead no closer to one's original destination of accomplishment.

The scratching returned and once again abated. I sighed. The door fell inward, splintering the frame, and there stood the ghoul, whose form I was familiar with -- for did my studies neglect any subject, even the most loathsome? I tell you, they did not. For the less erudite among you, I will describe it. The legs were short, the arms long. The entire body was hairless and nude, and the doughy skin looked wet, stretched over the collarbone, skull, ribs and limbs, but soft about the belly, buttocks, and somehow the neck, despite its position between two sparsely-fleshed areas. The jaw was long and the nose was flat and wide, but long as well, giving the overall impression of a muzzle. The canine quality of the ghoul's aspect did not end there, for it possessed pointed, asymmetrical ears and large, carnivorous teeth, with its thin lips showing hardly any difference in color from that of the rest of its unpleasantly fully-exposed anatomy. It spoke, and I count myself among the few living souls cursed with cognizance of the language it employed. I knew every baboon-like shriek and gurgle, every sound that I had never heard save in my own practices over the Kulter Aussprelicher (Annotated Edition) compiled by the helpful professors of the Von Juntz Academy. The gist of its speech was a request. Apparently the Wilmarthian clods had taken to bolstering their egos by obliterating various minor constructs the gods had left as placeholders in their earthly temples, through the use of large tactical military weapons and other ludicrous methods appropriate only to the Godzilla movies, all of which I am, coincidentally, ashamed to have seen. Repeatedly. It was also evident, after absorbing its yowling monologue, that many of these shoggoths and minor demons had been responsible for the drafting of the day-to-day messages their masters might deem to send each other, and the transmission of such. Would I, it asked, prefer a position as a sort of eldritch administrative assistant to the quite grisly fate of my housekeeper? I would. I am leaving this missive to the fine staff of Weird Tales Magazine, in the hopes that other like-minded persons may become aware of this fine career opportunity, for even if I am not sucked into the swirling madness, I am not permitted to return.

Please forward the following manuscript to the Thelemic Institute of Auckland, New Zealand, care of the office of Semitic legend, whose address I cannot recall and have no time to rediscover as of this writing. Their presence has been requested.

Memorandum to: Dagon who is called Oannes
Copy: High Priestesses of Dagon, late of Ashod, Philistia
Regarding: Your children & passing of such through the Fire

Sir,

It has come to our attention that the Children of Dagon have of late been absent from Tophet, where in accordance with our arrangement our representatives were waiting to pass them through the Fire. Our mutual agreement to this long-standing practice has not changed and you are cordially requested to overcome the difficulties presented by the recent migratory nature of your children, for as you know, the icons must be made red with blood, and the faces of your priests must be disfigured with our light such that they must live the rest of their days hidden from the sight of men, and your children must pass through the Fire, to our mutual benefit, etc.

Please be aware that if you cannot provide an adequate response our dealings will have to be ended as children to pass through the Fire are not as limited in supply as when this agreement was first drafted. All must pass through the Fire.

Cordially yrs,

Molech who is called Ba'al, Lord of the Ammonites